Selling Fast! Secure Your Seat Today!💨

Register to Enter a $100 Bookshop.org Gift Card Giveaway! 📚

Experience the education, camaraderie, and opportunities provided by a live writing conference without ever having to leave your home!

Writer's Digest University is pleased to present an exclusive virtual conference for novel writers! On January 30 - February 1, our Novel Writing Virtual Conference will provide expert insights from SEVEN award-winning and best-selling authors on the finer points of how to write a novel. Spend the weekend learning techniques for honing your craft skills, refining your characters, exploring the future of publishing, and getting the tools you need to advance your career as a writer from seven different published authors, then (if you choose) pitch your novel via query letter to a literary agent. The agent will provide you with a personalized critique of your query – and maybe ask to see more.

Benefits of Novel Writing Virtual Conference

Conference Webinars

📆 Friday | January 30, 2026

How to Write a Compelling Opening for Your Novel

Mia P. Manasala

Writers often complain about the “murky middle” or worry about whether they can land a satisfying ending, but in this time of increasingly short attention spans, readers know the number one thing you have to nail: a compelling opening. Otherwise, good luck getting them to read all the way to your oh so clever ending.

In this workshop, we will discuss opening lines and scenes from novels, analyze popular examples (please bring your own examples as well), and talk about the supposed “rules” of opening scenes–and when, how, and why to break them.

📆 Saturday | January 31, 2026

How to Keep the Pace in Your Novel

C. Hope Clark

Mystery novelist C. Hope Clark hopes to enlighten you on maintaining pace in your novel. Any genre needs pace to remain entertaining, and the tricks range from big picture to small touches with the magic being that the reader doesn't see what you did. They just want to keep reading. From plotting to word choice, from narrative to dialogue, learn how to insert more energy in your story.

The Pocket Guide to Pantsing: How to Write a Novel Without an Outlinegonists

Michael LaRonn

Pantsers: Do you want to ditch outlining forever but don't know how? Writing a novel without an outline is like solving a complex puzzle—daunting, but not impossible. Master this technique, and you'll write stories that you never dreamed of--and readers will pay you for it. In this practical presentation, prolific writer Michael La Ronn will talk about the pantsing process he's followed to write over 20 novels without an outline.

You'll discover: A tried-and-true structure for writing your book without an outline; how to win the war against self-doubt; what to do when you get stuck, and exactly what to write next; how to edit your novel as you go and produce a clean first and final draft. Once you write your first novel without an outline, the next one will be much easier.

Setting and World-Building: Immersing Your Readers in Your Novel

Richard Thomas

Of course we know that setting and world-building is important, but how do you fully immerse your audience in your novel? We'll talk about setting, sensory details, authority, big picture, and specific details. Whether you're a maximalist or a minimalist, writing speculative fiction, literary fiction, or somewhere under the mystery umbrella, if you can hypnotize your readers and cast a spell with your storytelling, they'll never want to put your book down.

📆 Sunday | February 1, 2026

Building an Ending That Will Bring Readers Back

Barbara O'Neal

This session breaks down how to build an ending from the inside out—by shaping emotional arcs early, threading them through the narrative, and guiding them toward a deeply felt payoff. We’ll look at ways to craft a closing movement in a satisfying way from resolving central tensions to pacing the final rise and release.

Finally, you’ll learn practical techniques for crafting a grace note—the quiet, powerful after-image that lets your story live in the reader long after the book is closed.

Developing Real and Fully-Formed Secondary Characters

Rob Hart

Protagonists and antagonists are important to a story, but what about all the other -ists? By that, of course, we mean secondary characters. Unique and compelling secondary characters help create a believable world. Learn how to create supporting characters with their own voices, who could easily walk off the page and into their own story.

Hooked: How to Make Your Novel Impossible to Ignore

Amy Collins

Look, writing a novel is hard. If it were easy, I would’ve finished that “sci-fi epic” I’ve been talking about since 1997. But selling a novel? That’s a whole different Olympic sport — and the judges are grumpy, over-caffeinated, and drowning in submissions. In this session, we’ll walk through how to find the shiny, irresistible idea at the center of your story that makes people say, “Okay, sounds great, I’ll read it.”

We’ll break down your plot, characters, and conflict to uncover what truly makes your book stand out, then we will ask a series of questions designed to get to exactly what makes you and your book special. Whether you write dragons, detectives, doomed lovers, or deeply broken humans (my personal fave), you’ll leave with a pitch and hooks you can use for querying, marketing, and finally being able to answer “so what do you write?” easily and with focus. Come for the insight, stay for the existential crisis about why you started writing — and leave with the sentence that might actually sell your book.